


Skinny

by bettysjughead



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 20:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13748907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettysjughead/pseuds/bettysjughead
Summary: They were back; and this time I couldn’t stop them.





	Skinny

'Are you planning to eat or sleep at all this year, Betty?'

How adequate, that Jughead asked her this question right before it all went wrong.

The thing was, that Betty didn't intend to do so.

How else should she manage to take the advanced classes she did and still be at the of her class if she slept?

And when you have to do three times as much schoolwork as your classmates do, you don't find the time to eat, do you?

It starts with replacing meals with time in the blue and gold office and occasionally doing schoolwork instead of sleeping.

After a while she notices, that without spending time on those trivialities, she is rarely stressed and her grades are as good as ever.

And in addition to her academic success, she notices how light she feels.

It's not as if she's deliberately trying to lose weight, it's more like a means to an end, really.

She had been on a scale only twice in her life. When she was born and during the summer holidays, when she had to see a doctor.

She was perfectly fine with her 5'3'' and 119 pounds. She really was.

But when Veronica tells her how beautiful she looks, she first starts to notice how her clothes are a bit baggier than a few weeks ago and how her hipbones rub against her jeans.

And she likes it.

So she decides to replace another meal with studying. It's no big deal, she thinks. It would make her feel better and she would undoubtedly ace her exams.

Nuts and raisins in the morning to make her brain work when she studies, plain yogurt for lunch and regular dinner. Nothing unhealthy about that.

And for the first time she deliberately weighs herself.

It's nothing bad about that, she thinks, every girl in her grade does it.

112 pounds.

She lost seven pounds since she started school again without even trying and she feels satisfied.

If she is able to lose weight and succeed at yet another thing, why should she stop?

She has perfect grades, a perfect circle of friends, a perfect family, so why not have a perfect body as well, she thinks.

It's not as if she is losing the weight for that boy she likes or for attention or to make the girl she hates jealous. She is doing it because of her urge for perfection.

So she starts to replace her breakfast not with studying, but with exercising.

Because skipping one study session won't hurt her grades, she thinks.

108 pounds.

She has gotten straight A's since school started and more and more people compliment her on her looks.

But by the end of the first half of the year the stress kicks in and she starts to study more and eat less.

It's no big deal, she thinks, her grades are still outstanding and she feels sick only occasionally.

101 pounds

This is when her friends start to worry about her.

'Please, eat' they say and look at her anxiously.

And she doesn't understand why they worry.

It's not as if she doesn't eat.

It's not like in the movies, where the skinny blonde girl with the cigarette in the one and the Diet Coke in the other hand shyly refuses a cupcake.

She eats, but then she shoves two fingers down her throat at night and exercises to burn the calories, which weren't contained in the oozy mass dripping from her chin and coming out of her throat.

91 pounds

This is when she first blacked out in class.

Exams were coming up and she didn't find the time to eat, so she fainted in Physical Education and the teacher had to send her to the nurse's office where she earned a deeply concerned frown and a variety of different medicines to make up for her lack of nutrients and is sent home early.

Her friends visit her and she tells them that she is okay.

86 pounds

It happened just after the exams, when she found out that her grades were dropping and she had failed a class.

But why should she care when she had control over what she ate, she thinks.

Now she can feel her ribs and hipbones rub against her clothes and she feels dizzy all the time.

One time she noticed that her hair started to fall out and fuzz started to show on her stomach, but she just can't bring herself to eat.

When she takes pills and serums to regrow her hair, she tells herself that she is okay.

82 pounds

That's when the teachers start to talk to her.

Weatherbee blames himself, for he gave Betty the opportunity to take all of the harder classes and the Nurse repeatedly tries to get her into the Hospital's Eating Disorder Unit.

Betty skips classes and watches her grades go down the drain, but everything she feels now is the hunger ripping her stomach apart.

75 pounds

Now purging has become a habit.

She shoves her fingers down her throat and up comes nothing but bile and blood, for she has eaten nothing for days.

She faints nearly everyday now and still forces herself to exercise.

Sleep has become a rarity, because she can hear her heart beating rapidly in her ears and the excruciating pain in her body keeps her awake at night.

But I'm okay, she thinks, I am in control and I can stop if I want to.

People start to talk about her, point at her and they don't dare to touch her.

72 pounds

This is when Betty thinks that she has eventually reached her goal.

And this is when they threaten to expel her, for she is failing her classes now.

70 pounds

They tell her she is freakishly skeletal and she hears Veronica cry herself to sleep after she walked in on Betty purging the dinner she didn't eat.

Now she has become the girl from the movies, who doesn't eat and lives off cigarettes and Diet Coke, she thinks, but she is okay.

Her heart is racing and unsteady, but she hasn't died yet so why shouldn't she continue?

  
68 pounds

  
This is when she faints in the hallway and they admit her to the Hospital's Eating Disorder Unit.

And now she lives off an IV bag and luck.

61 pounds

This is when they pronounce her as good as dead.

And her last breath is the one when she realises, that she is not okay.


End file.
